Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister has called a byelection for Point Douglas on June 13.

Voters in Winnipeg's Point Douglas area will soon be heading to the polls.

The Manitoba government announced on Friday that a byelection to replace former MLA Kevin Chief will be held June 13.
■NDP MLA Kevin Chief files resignation papers, seeks new life in private sector

Nominations for candidates officially close May 29.

So far, the candidates are:

Jodi Moskal (Progressive Conservatives)

Moskal is a journeyman electrician, former Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce chair and the vice-president of Moskal Electric.

Bernadette Smith (New Democratic Party)

Smith helped push for an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and co-founded Drag the Red, a group that searches the Red River for clues in missing persons cases. She is also a recent recipient of the Order of Manitoba.

Sabrina Koehn Binesi (Green Party)

Binesi is a community activist and Point Douglas resident who has worked as an executive office assistant in a number of federal and provincial government departments, and as a legal assistant.

John Cacayuran (Liberal Party)

Cacayuran served as a staffer under Liberal MP MaryAnn Mihychuk (Kildonan-St. Paul) and as an investigator with provincial regulatory bodies.

The NDP has won every provincial vote in the riding, which was once home to famous Canadian politician Tommy Douglas, the first federal NDP leader.

During the last provincial election, the Conservatives only won 17 per cent of the vote, behind the Liberals, who received 19.5 per cent. Chief won 57.5 per cent of the vote.

Advance polls will be open from June 3 to 10.

On voting day, polls will remain open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

There are currently 40 Conservatives, 12 New Democrats, three Liberals, one independent and one vacant seat in the Manitoba legislature.

There’s going to be a byelection in Point Douglas on June 13. Try to contain your excitement.

Let’s face it: byelections are far and away the most underwhelming of all political events. Very rarely does the outcome of a byelection play a role in determining which party forms government. And without the fuss and bother of a general election campaign to drive news coverage, voter turnout tends to be very, very low.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES</p><p>Jodi Moskal is representing the Progressive Conservatives in a riding where the party has achieved no success.</p>

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES

Jodi Moskal is representing the Progressive Conservatives in a riding where the party has achieved no success.

Perhaps that’s why Premier Brian Pallister waited until almost the very last moment to call a byelection in Point Douglas, made necessary when former NDP MLA and leadership hopeful Kevin Chief suddenly retired from politics last January.

Desperate to retain the riding, the NDP has nominated Bernadette Smith, a high-profile aboriginal activist who helped found the Coalition of Families of Missing and Murdered Women in Manitoba, and in the process was made a member of the Order of Manitoba.

The Tories are pinning their hopes on electrical contractor Jodi Moskal, a charismatic entrepreneur and former chair of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce.

The Liberals are touting John Cacayuran, a former federal Liberal staffer who is a well-respected member of Winnipeg’s Filipino community. The Greens are also in this race, having nominated community activist Sabrina Koehn Binesi.

Why would anyone pay attention to a byelection in Point Douglas, arguably the most diehard NDP riding in the province?

The simple fact of the matter is an NDP loss in Point Douglas would very much represent the insult to the injury suffered in last year’s general election, when the party was driven from power by the Tories in convincing fashion.

The riding as it is currently constituted dates back to 1969, and since then, it has had only three NDP MLAs: Donald Malinowski (1969-81), George Hickes (1981-2011) and Kevin Chief (2011-2017). In the 10 elections over that period, the NDP has never received less than 52 per cent of total votes cast.

However, Point Douglas also traditionally boasts the lowest voter turnout in the province. In the 2016 general election, 58 per cent of all registered voters in Manitoba showed up to vote; in Point Douglas, turnout was 44 per cent.

The low turnout is largely due to the fact that Point Douglas is a gritty, urban riding that captures some of Winnipeg’s poorest neighbourhoods. However, in recent years, residential development in the southern part of the riding has changed its socio-economic profile somewhat. New condominium development along Waterfront Drive and throughout the east Exchange District have added hundreds of new potential voters with distinctly upper-middle-class sensibilities who’ve shown a modest tendency to vote for the PCs.

In the 2016 election, the poll that captures most of the new condos on Waterfront Drive was the only one that former MLA Kevin Chief did not win. In that one poll, the Tories came out ahead by eight votes.

What strategy will each of the three major parties follow in this byelections?

The Tory strategy for the June 13 byelection is to squeeze the maximum number of votes out of these areas, and work strenuously to pull whatever votes they can from the other, older polls.

However, this riding has not embraced Tory candidates; in the past 10 general elections, the Tories have only polled more than 1,000 votes twice, and only three times have they been able to produce a second-place finish.

Moskal will also have to deal with the fact that the party she wants to represent has accumulated an impressive collection of political baggage in its first 12 months in office. From a premier who fiercely defends his right to spend leisurely vacations in Costa Rica, to recent fiscal decisions to close hospital emergency rooms and ration funding for health care and education, the Tories have delivered an array of policies that will not be popular in Point Douglas.

The Liberals have easily outperformed the Tories in Point Douglas since 1969, but have not really come close to winning. The Grits will be largely relying on Cacayuran’s capacity to attract votes from the Filipino community in Point Douglas, thought to be the fasting-growing in the riding.

Cacayuran reportedly has the retail political skills to compete, but as a Liberal, he is running for a party that is — like the NDP — leaderless and cash poor. And, largely because they have not run fulsome campaigns in the past, neither the Liberals nor the Tories have access to detailed voter-identification data to guide their canvassing and election-day efforts.

For Smith, the strategy is quite simple: convince diehard NDP supporters the party is on the rebound, and they have to show up in numbers more typical of a general election turnout. If New Democrats in the riding are still harbouring resentment over the Selinger years and decide to stay home, then the fortunes of both the Liberals and Tories start to rise.

The hard reality for Smith is the NDP is a still deeply damaged brand in Manitoba politics.

The NDP is a party without a leader or a positive bank-account balance. Smith’s salvation may come from the fact she will have access to more detailed, more accurate voter identification data than any of the three major party candidates.

The Point Douglas byelection seems unlikely to generate much in the way of excitement. And the result — no matter how it breaks — will not necessarily reveal some greater truth about the parties involved.

However, there is no escaping the fact an NDP loss in Point Douglas would represent an enormous body blow to a party that has suffered quite a bit since last year’s general election.

A win by either the Liberals or Tories would be nice, but not essential in this instance. On the other hand, the NDP needs to retain Point Douglas to show Manitobans that it doesn’t have any further to fall.

"They said we couldn't do it, we couldn't keep this riding, but here we are. NDP!" Smith said.

Smith, a North End-raised activist, said representing the riding made sense for her.

"This was a natural next step."

She said despite low voter turnout, she wasn't worried about the seat.

"I knew the people that were engaged and that were wanting to vote, that wanted to keep this seat and send a strong message to this government, would get out there and vote, and they did."

'Feel the burn'

She didn't mince words about the governing Progressive Conservatives and said she's confident the NDP will regain power in 2020.

"Brian Pallister and the Conservative government are going to feel the burn," she said.

Liberal John Cacayuran after losing byelection in Point Douglas
Liberal candidate John Cacayuran is hugged by Shirley Green, a campaign volunteer, after learning he lost his bid to become MLA for Point Douglas. (Erin Brohman/CBC)

Smith is a rookie who is new to politics but is well known in the community for her advocacy work with missing and murdered Indigenous women. ​Her sister, Claudette Osborne, vanished in 2008 and hasn't been seen since.

Smith will replace Chief, also an NDP MLA, who resigned from office last December, citing family reasons.

The Point Douglas riding has never elected a candidate from any other party. Smith was up against five other candidates, including Progressive Conservative Jodi Moskal and Liberal John Cacayuran.

Cacayuran said he was sad to lose but knew he was fighting an uphill battle given the NDP's dominance in the Point Douglas riding.

"It wasn't like I was shocked."

Drop in overall NDP support

Overall, voter turnout was down Tuesday night. Only 32 per cent of eligible voters cast votes in the byelection, compared to a 43 per cent turnout in the 2016 provincial election.

Overall support for the NDP was also down compared to the 2016 election.

Smith captured 44 per cent of the vote — a low for the NDP, who had never previously scored less than 52 per cent of the vote in Point Douglas.

Some of those votes appeared to go to the Liberals, who captured 29 per cent of the vote in a marked improvement from last year's 19 per cent. A Liberal win would have given the struggling party a fourth legislature seat — enough for official party status.

The governing Tories, represented by electrician and business owner Jodi Moskal, saw the same 16 per cent result they scored in last year's general election.

Borrowing from the catchphrase that helped Bernie Sanders become a rockstar grassroots candidate in the United States, Bernadette Smith swooped into a seat in the Manitoba Legislature Tuesday with a win in Point Douglas and a promise the province will “feel the Bern”.

Smith captured the North End riding byelection with 1,264 votes with 45 of 47 polls reporting, eclipsing Liberal John Cacayuran (936) and Conservative Jodi Moskal (501) in the process.

“We’re going to come in there strong, we’re going to take this government on, we’re going to fight for this community,” Smith said. “Enough of the Brian Pallister cuts. He’s going to feel the Bern.”

Smith has been a vocal leader on the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls front, herself personally touched by the epidemic with her sister, Claudette Osborne, having gone missing in 2008.

“Really I’ve been working in this community forever,” Smith said. “So this is a natural next step. We need to make sure that the services and the people in this community are taken care of and that this government isn’t making any more cuts.”

NDP MLA Nahanni Fontaine introduced Smith to her supporters at the Ukranian Labour Temple and said “the NDP made history again”, noting the party’s track record of being first to elect indigenous candidates.

Yet it was also historic lows for Point Douglas and for the NDP. Voter turnout was below 30% and the NDP’s share of those votes was the lowest ever, hovering around 41% and well below the previous low showing for the party of 52% in 1969.

Those numbers, however, can be deceiving given that turnout and voter enthusiasm is far lower in a byelection than in a general election, according to U of M associate professor Royce Koop.

“I think you want to be careful about attaching too much importance to the results of a byelection,” Koop said. “People know their vote’s not going to have any effect on who is (running) the government. It’s a low result, but I would expect in the next general election the NDP will snap back to the average and normal vote share they’d be getting in this riding.”

Manitoba Liberal Party president Paul Brault said Cacayuran showed well in his political debut and the NDP’s comparatively low numbers show he made an impression.

“I think that sends a strong message that the Manitoba Liberal Party is here, we’re here to grow and to be able to be a competitive left-of-centre party,” Brault said. “We took on the safest NDP seat in the province and we can hold our head high to say that we put in a very good effort. I have no regrets of what we have and what we’ve done

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